Tantus wrote:I think it's at that dry spell waiting for the Next-Big-Sim to come along and if GE's any indication, then Gor has finally hit the dump!

Friends from ROIAF GoT tell me it's not been so rosy there of late either, even the pinnacle of excellence in SL RP is having its share of metagaming and OOC manipulating! :totalshock: And that was last month.

The latest episode is in progress. I always wanted to RP there... but that character creation process was a monster!

Yeah. Some of the players were caught and presumably kept an eye on for a while now and when the admins finally clamped down on it some of them freaked and rage-quit. ROIAF should be a bit healthier for it now with that clique taking their toys elsewhere.

I love the RP and intrigue there though. For me personally it's everything I enjoy about RP. It's possible there'll be a time jump or reboot soon from what I've heard through the grapevine, but I think they'll probably ask the community first what they'd like, like they usually do.

Tantus wrote:Friends from ROIAF GoT tell me it's not been so rosy there of late either, even the pinnacle of excellence in SL RP is having its share of metagaming and OOC manipulating! :totalshock: And that was last month.

From the perspective of a misanthropic interwebz cynic, it was quite amusing. From the perspective of a role player, it was quite annoying.

I've said it in other threads and I'll say it again: Gor does not prepare people well for RPing in other genres. Risk, IC conflict, IC/OOC separation, the ability to resolve OOC conflict without drama - there's a dearth of all those things in Gor. Some people "get it" when they move genres, but many don't, and it's really no wonder Gor players have the reputation they do across the grid.

The people at the heart of it left, though, things went back to normal pretty quickly, the IC story is very interesting (or, the bits of it I know are), and traffic as of today sits at just over 44k.

I heard one of the people - actually, probably the main instigator (someone who'd been banned from ROIAF on at least two previous occasions that I know about, for metagaming, and was evading those bans by using an alt) went to a fairly popular fantasy sim and managed to create drama within their first few days.

Some people just want to watch the world burn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I call my vagina "New Yorker cartoon" because it's dry and a handful of people have laughed at it.

Oh hell no, Oor! This is my moment of Interwebs Validation and you don't get to pull that from me by dumping this on Gorean players too!

It's amusing for me because I've had many SL friends from GoT telling me how shady Gorean roleplayers are, how they turn up in ROIAF with their entitled attitudes and expectations of OOC sex with anyone they encounter. And so it goes on an on, with every little incident in GoT being blamed on Gorean immigrants!

So after hearing of these events, I can now tell my GoT friends how dramatic their sims are. Which is expected from a place populated by teens and twenty years olds! (Fake news and misinformation is all the rage these days). And how dice rolls are flawed when half the sim won't follow through with their consequences, and the other half are all metagaming in their Discord clique. Neither is there scope for furthering plots when Admins are sleeping on the job and forgetting to convey critical information to players. And I'll not even begin on the dating-club atmosphere in ROIAF, where people roll a new character, get married under the pretence of political progression, get bored, roll new character and get married anew. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Sounds suspiciously similar to Gorean roleplay does it not.

None of which concerns me now but should I happen to be in SL, I don't anticipate some random GoT roleplayer IM'ing me to complain of their horrific experiences in Gor any longer!

As to you and Anarch, I hope you do continue having fun in GoT RP No place is perfect so you make of it what you can.

Tantus wrote:Oh hell no, Oor! This is my moment of Interwebs Validation and you don't get to pull that from me by dumping this on Gorean players too!

You need better informants.

Tantus wrote:It's amusing for me because I've had many SL friends from GoT telling me how shady Gorean roleplayers are, how they turn up in ROIAF with their entitled attitudes and expectations of OOC sex with anyone they encounter.

That's not why Gor players, generally, have crappy reputations in GoT (and far, far beyond). It's because they fail to understand basic concepts of roleplay. Many don't grasp the separation of IC/OOC, the idea that a story can continue beyond a scene or two, the concept of IC consequences for IC actions, and so on. They make miraculous escapes of the same type as the "lockpicks the cage from the inside" trope in Gor, and forego risk mechanics entirely.

And yes - there's been a little drama at ROIAF. An admin dropped the ball on something recently and it caused an issue. They then found a solution that best suited everyone involved, communicated it through forums and opened up discussion so people could make their feelings known and have dialogue about the issue. Of the players actively involved in the scene in question, only one left the sim. I haven't seen a Gor sim respond that way to drama. Hell, I've barely ever seen a Gor sim where the owner wasn't the unkillable IC leader (admins in ROIAF are not permitted to be king or queen) and had a bunch of their buddies as admins. But it's been a while. Maybe Gor changed.

I don't like out-of-game (or even OOC group) chats, as a rule, but the discord clique you mentioned (which didn't metagame) wasn't even a fraction as poisonous as the other "clique" that was active on sim (which is now gone, and the difference is night and day). Sometimes people manage to gossip themselves into believing the most ridiculous things - but that's just groups of humans for you.

But really, seeing someone this excited about gaining validation because a 4+ year old sim had a little blip (one of several, in my time there, by the way - there are people, ergo there is sometimes drama) doesn't make me doubt my decision to in vest time, energy and lindens there. On the contrary, really.

So really, is ROIAF perfect? Absolutely not. Point me to a perfect roleplay sim and I'll call you a liar. But is it as bad as Gor is, discounting the occasional 6 week slice of RP sanity? Even the suggestion is laughable.

I call my vagina "New Yorker cartoon" because it's dry and a handful of people have laughed at it.

It's all just a bit side humour to me, being that I don't even know the players involved. So you can brush them off as 'Gorean Roleplayers' now, but the fact is if we spoke of these people 3-4 months ago, they would have been spoken of as representative of ROIAF's high standards. And the moment there's drama, they're relegated to the status of Gorean Roleplayers. Whether they've ever roleplayed in Gor or not.

So I am not excited, merely amused at how defensive ROIAF players are about their sim. When the majority of them have previously roleplayed in Gor too. King's Landing was first built by Vanity and Gwen - and I think - ROIAF has descended from that sim.

Oor wrote:That's not why Gor players, generally, have crappy reputations in GoT (and far, far beyond). It's because they fail to understand basic concepts of roleplay. Many don't grasp the separation of IC/OOC, the idea that a story can continue beyond a scene or two, the concept of IC consequences for IC actions, and so on. They make miraculous escapes of the same type as the "lockpicks the cage from the inside" trope in Gor, and forego risk mechanics entirely.

The Gorean Roleplayer is not a single entity. It's easily said but beyond the comprehension of many, even you, who has roleplayed in Gor are now speaking of Gorean Roleplayers as a catastrophic collective. I happen to know many worthwhile Gorean roleplayers who've taken sim storylines beyond the routine. Do people tire of a genre and move on? Yes. Then should their contributions be forgotten and only the worst element of those sims remembered?

Oor wrote:And yes - there's been a little drama at ROIAF. An admin dropped the ball on something recently and it caused an issue. They then found a solution that best suited everyone involved, communicated it through forums and opened up discussion so people could make their feelings known and have dialogue about the issue. Of the players actively involved in the scene in question, only one left the sim. I haven't seen a Gor sim respond that way to drama. Hell, I've barely ever seen a Gor sim where the owner wasn't the unkillable IC leader (admins in ROIAF are not permitted to be king or queen) and had a bunch of their buddies as admins. But it's been a while. Maybe Gor changed.

Actual Gor-Roleplay sims tend not to have the sim owner as IC leader any longer. Some are even against having any admin/mod as the IC leader.

The last I was active in Gor, we roleplayed out a coup on our sim and to the Deposed Leader's credit, he continued to roleplay it out for several weeks after. Does that give us one up on ROIAF, where the king bailed at the first notion of conflict RP.

Through our IC efforts, we toppled three consecutive administrations of the Imperial Ar just gone, and they roleplayed it out too. So in 2017, BTB is handling conflict storyline and IC/OOC separation far more responsibly than the top tier of ROIAF roleplayers. Maybe it is helping you feel better to claim Gorean players haven't grasped the concept of roleplay, but the fact is, the first major storyline of this year for GoT and they gave a Biker-Gorean lifestyler level performance.

Oor wrote:So really, is ROIAF perfect? Absolutely not. Point me to a perfect roleplay sim and I'll call you a liar. But is it as bad as Gor is, discounting the occasional 6 week slice of RP sanity? Even the suggestion is laughable.

It's down to what you want in your roleplay, playing lords and ladies. Or companions and slaves. I would say the actual political roleplay and its IC ramifications are hit-or-miss on any sim. In BTB you can control the direction with raid-wins. In GoT, you can do so with letters, apparently

Tantus wrote:Actual Gor-Roleplay sims tend not to have the sim owner as IC leader any longer. Some are even against having any admin/mod as the IC leader.

The last I was active in Gor, we roleplayed out a coup on our sim and to the Deposed Leader's credit, he continued to roleplay it out for several weeks after. Does that give us one up on ROIAF, where the king bailed at the first notion of conflict RP.

Through our IC efforts, we toppled three consecutive administrations of the Imperial Ar just gone, and they roleplayed it out too. So in 2017, BTB is handling conflict storyline and IC/OOC separation far more responsibly than the top tier of ROIAF roleplayers. Maybe it is helping you feel better to claim Gorean players haven't grasped the concept of roleplay, but the fact is, the first major storyline of this year for GoT and they gave a Biker-Gorean lifestyler level performance.

This must be these 'alternative facts' I've been hearing so much about. :p

I also know more than a handful of amazing role player who either still play in, or started out in, Gor. That doesn't change the fact that the standard in aggregate is dismal, nor that Gorean role players have an understandably awful reputation across the role playing grid. On this very forum, which many have said has a collection of some of the better role players Gor has to offer, where the understanding of role play is much better on average than in Gor general, it is still possible to have heated debate about whether "IC and OOC should be separate" - perhaps the most basic tenet of role play in any venue, medium or genre - is a controversial statement.

Tantus wrote:Does that give us one up on ROIAF, where the king bailed at the first notion of conflict RP.

The fact that you think that was that king's "first notion of conflict" is hilarious. So is the idea that sticking with a bested character for only a few weeks (!) is somehow commendable, or indeed unusual.

Tantus wrote:It's down to what you want in your roleplay, playing lords and ladies. Or companions and slaves. I would say the actual political roleplay and its IC ramifications are hit-or-miss on any sim. In BTB you can control the direction with raid-wins. In GoT, you can do so with letters, apparently

I don't think modes of conflict and politicking across the two genres are comparable (or Gor with any genre, in fact). Gor sims look without for any conflict that isn't personal relationship stuff. Other genres tend to look within, using factions with cohesive timelines and stories and histories. After usually having people apply to join with at least a passing nod to ongoing lore.

If Gor is getting better? Great! If the genre is finally shaking off its lifestyler roots and stepping into more intricate story than shaky justifications for pew pew interspersed between fuckscenes between slave girl characters and dudes played by dudes who think slave girl characters should never be involved in story... awesome! Where can I find that? Got a SLurl?

I call my vagina "New Yorker cartoon" because it's dry and a handful of people have laughed at it.

Shitty people go to Gor... GOT.. Shadowrun... Midhr.whatever.. insert sim here, to think otherwise is naive. These sims come and go and granted Crack Den and GOT and maybe some other continue through great efforts these sims generally don't last because of the mods shitting on each other.

The good roleplayers I met in GOR are good regardless of what they play so if I shitty person B on another genre sim that person will still not appear different until I meet their alt and cross them out again.

The problem I had persistently in GOT was plotting anything if the plot moves one whenever I am not online. A large quantity of americans collecting unemployment out there. So aside that I don't really know what to do in there so I backed off.

Anarch Allegiere wrote:This must be these 'alternative facts' I've been hearing so much about. :p

It's all the rage these days, RL politics in 2017 has surpassed comedy for entertainment! But anything I say about Gorean RPs, has happened. Regardless I would welcome those alternative facts too!

Oor wrote:Is there something about the word "generally" that you struggle with?

I also know more than a handful of amazing role player who either still play in, or started out in, Gor. That doesn't change the fact that the standard in aggregate is dismal, nor that Gorean role players have an understandably awful reputation across the role playing grid. On this very forum, which many have said has a collection of some of the better role players Gor has to offer, where the understanding of role play is much better on average than in Gor general, it is still possible to have heated debate about whether "IC and OOC should be separate" - perhaps the most basic tenet of role play in any venue, medium or genre - is a controversial statement.

Controversial? It's just a lot of nonsense. There is no separation unless you happen to be an emotionless robot roleplaying on the Internet. Everyone crosses OOC with IC at some point, even your IC relationship(whatever it may be) with Anarch's character in ROIAF was decided OOC'ly. And you're not alone, practically everyone at some point is motivated to roleplay with another character based upon their OOC history. That friendship will further determine the direction of their IC interaction.

Some day, you shall look beyond the fable of perfection you've created for yourself and your sim. And see how everyone, at some point, metagames, manipulates and fails to separate their wants, from their character's needs.

Back in the real world, almost anyone in an IC relationship begins forming OOC expectations from their partner. Hence why so many men bail on their Internet wives and RP sims are left with an overwhelming majority of women and GBKs.

Oor wrote:The fact that you think that was that king's "first notion of conflict" is hilarious. So is the idea that sticking with a bested character for only a few weeks (!) is somehow commendable, or indeed unusual.

I've already declared myself ignorant of ROIAF's history from never having roleplayed there and you may be amused by it all you like. As to the deposed leader, it was commendable, for he roleplayed out his fall from grace for some weeks after the event, then gathered sympathizers around his plans for a return to power. But in the end, as the noose was closing in on him and his plotting he took refuge in another city and continues to roleplay there.

In contrast, and from how I understand it, a bested character in GoT would be exiled from Kings' Landing, that character goes into limbo and the same avatar re-rolls and returns to roleplay the very next day as a new person.

Different strokes for different folks, but I know which one would give me the fuller sense of roleplaying the aftermath to a critical event.

Also, I almost entered ROIAF earlier this year, but the sim was drifting with just a couple of IC people looking bored. And it may show higher traffic now, but most of those people are AFK in the landing area with only a handful on the actual sim below. From what I know, people only congregate during IC events, then disappear into their groups and skyboxes. It's not an environment I've roleplayed in before, for someone like myself who prefers to make my acquaintances IC'ly, I would struggle where people appear to enter into pre-configured cliques and keep to themselves.

Oor wrote:I don't think modes of conflict and politicking across the two genres are comparable (or Gor with any genre, in fact). Gor sims look without for any conflict that isn't personal relationship stuff. Other genres tend to look within, using factions with cohesive timelines and stories and histories. After usually having people apply to join with at least a passing nod to ongoing lore.

If Gor is getting better? Great! If the genre is finally shaking off its lifestyler roots and stepping into more intricate story than shaky justifications for pew pew interspersed between fuckscenes between slave girl characters and dudes played by dudes who think slave girl characters should never be involved in story... awesome! Where can I find that? Got a SLurl?

Cohesive timelines like ROIAF's infamously tangled family trees? With people calling for a jump into the future just to clear the mud. There is such a thing as blowing your trumpet without any air, Oor, and you may fawn over ROIAF all you like, but the fact is that sim goes through seasonal periods too. Eventually everyone has experienced marriage with everyone else, the drama becomes too much and everyone leaves. Then after some months of quiet it slowly builds back up again. Just like it happens on, say... Sais.

Gor is absolutely upon its last legs. When I speak of Gorean Roleplayers, I'm not thinking of the dozens of lifestyle and psuedo lifestyle sims, they do not exist to me. I only include the handful of sims where people roleplay Gor. And those sims exist as only a couple, at any one time.